


Tides

by FrozenBrownie



Series: To your heart's desire [2]
Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: 1814, General!Viktor, Hurt/Comfort, London, M/M, Merchant!Yuuri, Mild Angst, Wales, happy end, regency au, vague description of battle injury
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-14
Updated: 2020-09-14
Packaged: 2021-03-06 19:42:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,452
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26460610
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FrozenBrownie/pseuds/FrozenBrownie
Summary: In the days following death and exhausted victory, General Viktor Nikiforov wonders if he is coming home from a war or fleeing his own urge to lie down on last year’s withered leaves and let the pattering rain drum him to eternal sleep. It would be all too easy to succumb to blood loss, the bone-deep wariness and fatigue, the weight of which drops him at the British shore like a sack of potatoes. Rotten from the inside, harvested too late. Instead he steps over mud and shit, inhales the stink of London without finding a trace of gunpowder and follows the oily Thames to the merchant’s warehouses. He only just landed back on his feet in strange, foreign Great Britain, injured and dizzy with the whiplash of sudden peace. His only goal: to come home in Yuuri Katsuki's arms.
Relationships: Katsuki Yuuri/Victor Nikiforov
Series: To your heart's desire [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1923565
Comments: 17
Kudos: 57





	Tides

**Author's Note:**

> Hello, internet!  
> Some of you begged me for a happy end to my Regency week AU of the Yuri on ice 18+ fandom server, so here it is. I had tremendous fun writing this as I took a bunch of metaphors, the aesthetic of stinking London in 1814, a handful of Napoleonic war history knowledge and way too many parallels to Pride&Prejudice, sent them through a blender and now I'm dumping all of this at your feet. You're welcome, have fun, these boys deserve some love and warmth.   
> Thank you to Michaela for beta'ing, I apprecciate it immensely. <3

In Viktor’s experience, an ending feels as hollow as endings tend to do until the next one rolls around. The papers speak of the end of an era. A finish to over a decade of horror, two decades, for the French. Nobody ever determined when all this would be over for good. Now? This second, this minute, in the heartbeats after the battle of Paris, on the last day of March 1814 when Napoleon Bonaparte is struggling like a fish in his enemy’s hands? A day later? When the news spreads like wildfire over the French Empire, into the German lands, into Prussia, into Russia, the British Empire? Does it end – it, the war, the torment of Europe, the reign of a devil too smart for his own good – as his fate is sealed on a sheet of paper after he tried to escape through the easy way out?   
How does an entire continent move on from over a decade of all-consuming war when half of two generations is buried in the ground?  
  
In the days following death and exhausted victory, General Viktor Nikiforov wonders if he is coming home from a war or fleeing his own urge to lie down on last year’s withered leaves and let the pattering rain drum him to eternal sleep. It would be all too easy to succumb to blood loss, the bone-deep wariness and fatigue, the weight of which drops him at the British shore like a sack of potatoes. Rotten from the inside, harvested too late. Instead he steps over mud and shit, inhales the stink of London without finding a trace of gunpowder and follows the oily Thames to the merchant’s warehouses. People bow to him as if he were the Tsar himself, but then, his battered uniform marks him as one of Europe’s most powerful strategists from eastern lands too far away for the average Londoner to grasp. They whisper and curtsey and they bow when he stops, trance-like, in front of a red brick building.   
  
Flagging down the first sailor who stumbles out of it, with his arms full of sacks of god knows what goods, is easier than he feared even with his rough Russian accent cutting into the English language.   
“Excuse me, good Sir, how do I get a hold of Mister Katsuki? He owns the company you work for, I believe.” The ginger-haired middle-aged man stares at him as if Viktor had just grown a second head and a few tentacles for show.   
“The Japanese merchant? Haven’t you heard?” He lets the silence stretch for just long enough so that the sailor takes a second good look at him. The uniform, the ramrod posture, the tired eyes, the right arm in a sling never to shoot with ever again. “… Ah. Lad’s been stinkin’ lucky. Got filthy rich through investment. Doubled this place in size. Pays well, must say. If you’re lucky, stranger, he’ll come down to the city again soon when the tides turn for the Americas.”  
  
Viktor grasps the poor man by the arm so hard he almost drops his load. Fear is coursing through his veins, spiced up with joy, pride, longing so sharp it wrenches a dagger right into his beating heart. The last letter he received from Yuuri Katsuki is four months old.   
“Where is he now? Where can I find him?”  
“Easy there, soldier. Just got back from kickin’ Bonny’s hairy arse, are ya? If you’re so desperate to find the master, I would ask his secretary. Out for lunch at the fish market right now, should be back in about an hour. Now let me go, or I’ll have to knock you down by that arm.” Viktor does, as if burned, stumbles back a step and merely avoids a painful acquaintance from above with a stack of wrapped cloth.   
“Secretary,” he echoes, wracking his brain for any clues about anyone Yuuri might have mentioned in his letters. Even only between the lines. But he comes up blank, feeling like somebody threw him under one of the swinging tons of wares to be heaved upon an endless line of ships. The river blocks his nose. A freezing breeze whips over the promenade, if this busy place deserves such a name at all.   
“Aye, Asian like the master. Darker in skin tone, rounder eyes, right odd man to look at. Apparently does the numbers for the master. Brightest fabrics on any sane person this side of the river.” The sailor eyes Viktor down and up again, impatient and obviously quite done with this foreigner. “New ‘round here, I s’ppose. You can’t miss him. Just follow the smell of ill health and river junk, that way’s the Billingsgate fisher’s market.”  
“Thank you, good man,” Viktor shoots off, wrings his hands in thanks and staggers into the direction down the river the sailor points like an accusation.   
  
London still hates him. The feeling is mutual.   
  
Billingsgate Wharf is a cluttered mess of shacks holding each other up against the gusts of early spring winds. They press into a narrow street running downstream from below the tattered London Bridge. There are houses on top of it, and houses underneath it, and the shacks to both sides are leaning into the shadow of more houses to the left-hand side. It rather looks like the bridge is cowering from all these buildings, every bend and twist a testament to its age. Someone ought to tear the whole place down and build it up anew from the ground, or else all this is doomed to collapse into the murky Thames. Here it is a sleepy band of black water lapping at its confines, suffocated by an armada of ant-like ships. They all carry fish of various species, sizes and freshness; the smell alone is almost enough to turn Viktor around and send him scurrying back through the masses. Their bodies press close to him without anyone intentionally pushing, and if someone is daft enough to think themselves in a hurry, the sheer number of patrons browsing the stalls is sufficient to trap them as efficiently as any rope. Had Viktor’s understanding of English been rudimentary at best so far, the dialect that the Londoners and all kinds of merchants speak down here is neigh incomprehensible. The largest fish market of the kingdom is a dark, filthy place he would never wander inside willingly any other day.   
  
Of course, Yuuri’s secretary stands out like a pink poodle.   
“Excuse me,” mutters Viktor over and over as he shoves his way to that silk trade advertisement on legs; “excuse me, forgive me, sorry, excuse me, I must go through.“ So busy is he with not losing his way, not stepping into a gutted fish or twenty, and preferably not brushing his sleeves on anything only half alive either, that the moment he stands in front of the vibrant man stuns him into silence. Even younger than Yuuri himself, brown skinned in the shade of milk and coffee blended together, dressed in the most exquisite finery of some far-away Asian country and blessed with a shock of black hair, the man is a revelation. Impossible to miss, indeed.   
He turns around and his eyes go wide.   
“Oh,” says his saviour, and again: “Oh. Oh, dear. I think I know who you are, Sir.”  
“I think I know who you are as well,” Viktor manages with the hint of a wobbly smile, not too surprised when the stranger with eyes as kind as Yuuri’s immediately takes him gently by the elbow – his good one – and steers him away from the clamouring masses.  
“Strangers in a foreign land, souls at sea, my friend. I knew we would meet one day. Now, you look like you have been through hell and not quite back yet. Let me help with that, shall we?”  
  
When Viktor is secure in the expectation that his meagre breakfast atop ship will not come up to see the grey light of the day anytime soon, when he feels like sitting down for other reasons than wanting to collapse on the spot, his new friend leans him against a lamp post and comes back not a minute later with something that looks suspiciously like hard tack with something fishy on it in a paper wrapper. He snatches the smelling fish off before Viktor can even muster the annoyance to make a face, promptly followed by an offer that’s more order than question.   
“Eat something, good Sir, you will need your strength in this city. Now, my name is Phichit Chulanont, and if I am not mistaken, you are one of the most famed men of our modern day.” His bow is even more polite and elegant than anything Yuuri showed him that one night. Viktor follows clumsily out of shame. The accent is impossible to place, it catches on certain vowels that he has yet to identify a pattern in while the letter r seems to have entirely fallen out of the alphabet. He has absolutely no idea which colony in specific this friendly soul might be from.   
  
“General Nikiforov at your service. I thank you heartily, Mister Chulanont. Am I right in having sought out yourself in pursuit of one Mister Katsuki?”  
“Indeed you are,” Mr Chulanont replies with sparkling eyes, watches him eat hastily and takes his arm again as soon as he is done. They wander back to the bridge which Viktor had given a wide berth on his way here. “Whoever sent you gets a raise. You have come just at the right time, might that be placed at the Lord’s feet or Bonaparte’s streak of bad luck lately, I neither care a wit. Now, London is a wonderful city, the melting pot of opportunists and the centre of our world, but I do believe you need to be somewhere else right now. Am I wrong?”  
“No,” Viktor gives, oddly comforted by the amount and the poetry of Mr Chulanont’s words. What Yuuri might have told his new friend he wonders, though the fearsome weariness he carries around most new people these days remains blissfully asleep.   
  
Somehow the people of London swerve around them at arm’s length, which is rather as wide as the Thames for Londoner standards, and strange on top as most of them stare after the pair like they never saw an Asian and a Russian man idle towards the city centre on a Tuesday at noon. It probably does not help their case that Mr Chulanont is dressed to impress even the Emperor of China in vivid red.   
“You must have questions. Excuse my lack of manners, usually I am more articulate than this and surer of my bearings,” Viktor tries again as they are walking back towards the red brick building which he identified as Yuuri’s warehouse earlier. But his companion only shakes his pretty head and waves an elegant hand in the air.   
“Nonsense! If you came here straight from Paris as word has it recently, excuse my directness, I am sorry that no-one offered you a place to rest your head and soak in the peace you brought us amongst many other brave men. Let us take a coach, this walking has made me tired.” He only says it for Viktor’s benefit, of course, quite obvious in the way he claims the attention of a man at the front door of the tall building looking mighty important with quill, ink in a glass and paper in front of him on a desk. They exchange a few quick pleasantries as well as a mutual bow that is not quite as deep on the Englishman’s end than on Mr Chulanont’s, but Viktor expects nothing else of this wretched city. A coach is hired in under a minute, no easy feat on a street as crowded as the riverside. They take off west, Viktor notes, towards Westminster. He has the most recent map he could get his hands on memorized.   
  
“I did indeed,” he confesses a good while later when ensconced safely in the dark carriage, wincing at the awkward abruptness of the continued conversation from a good half an hour ago. Mr Chulanont only tilts his head at him. “Come straight from Paris, that is. We took it after much struggle. It gives me no pleasure to announce it, too many civilians died in the fighting and many of my comrades are not half as noble as we ought to be.” He nods as if he is glad over the first consistent sentences Viktor has strung together in his proximity. Somehow, he manages to make the slight gesture he does towards the fixed arm seem kind rather than pitiful.   
“It must be terribly difficult going about one’s daily business with one hand tied to your front. I imagine I would prefer it to that hand being tied to my back, I suppose, but it looks like a painful annoyance. Does it need re-wrapping, medical attention? I can get you a decent doctor within a few hours, no questions asked.”  
  
His knee-jerk instinct, of course, is to deny any and all pain, so that no-one comes near his most vulnerable part right now. People carry all sorts of weapons even under civilian high dress. But then he will be no use to Yuuri if he dies of infection before Viktor can reach him, not to speak of the hiss he has to trap behind his teeth at every bump the carriage rolls over. So he averts his eyes in shame and nods, only once. Mr Chulanont relaxes, of all things, and smiles.   
“Very good, thank you for your trust. I shall be glad to be of more use than keeping the books clean.”  
“I will pay you back, of course.”  
“You already did by keeping us all safe, no matter how little joy you can find in the war won. And if you truly want to do me a favour, please get Yuuri out of his mournful sulking in Wales.” Viktor stares. “Now, none of that look, I know precisely whom my dearest friend has lost his heart to sixteen months ago. Sixteen months and seven days, as he reminded me in a letter this morning.”  
  
Another bump makes Viktor startle. His heart beats twice its normal pace, it jumps, it tumbles, proving just how alive he still is. Despite everything.   
“He wrote to you just this morning? He lives?” Wales, echoes in his head, Wales, and there comes the realization. His one free, gloved, hand flies to his mouth. “Oh, Lord above. Are you in possession of his current address? I beg of you, good Mister Chulanont, I simply have to write ahead.”  
“See that you do,” Mr Chulanont answers with a smile that is almost smug, decidedly satisfied. “I will have the paper prepared while you bathe, should you wish to take another strongly felt suggestion of mine. And here we are too.”   
  
The house they get out in front of is more deserving of the title of a manor, so unusual for the average merchant in London that Viktor can only wonder if this is Yuuri’s childhood home. It is white on the outside, looks quite a few decades old but not old enough to be impressively so in a city like London, built of two storeys and blessed with lavish gardens all around. Almost hidden by the arcade of trees the carriage emerged from, it is sure to only be one of many manors close by. Mr Chulanont has the foresight not to offer a hand to help Viktor out but to wait up for him. All business-like in everything but the gazes he rests upon Viktor, he gives off the air of a servant turned trusted friend who comes and goes from here as he pleases.   
“Welcome to the home of our much-missed mutual friend. You can stay for as many days as you like to recover, though I have an inkling you will want to be on your way to Wales soon already.” Viktor eyes him from the sides, taking the invitation for what it is.   
“Afraid so, yes. This is… rather more than I imagined. Thank you for your hospitality, Mister Chulanont.”  
  
His host shoos away the driver with his brown horses and the carriage before they enter the manor through the foyer. A few footmen scurry for their coats to hand them up to dry, Chulanont answers a quick firing of questions with the first footman who treats him with the utmost respect, thus initiating a bath and things to write that letter to be prepared for Viktor. It all moves past him in a flurry, blurred motions like he is still on the ship across the Channel. Were he not in quite so much pain and so thoroughly disorientated, he would be better at hiding how lost he feels. Mr Chulanont picks up on it and steers him through the maze of rooms like he did down at the riverbank. A salon, sitting rooms, a bustling kitchen, a library they all pass before they come to a guest room with a bed more luxurious than Viktor has seen since he left Saint Petersburg years ago. It seems so far removed from his reality now that he drops onto the edge of it, dizzy.   
  
“Do you know,” he inserts in Mr Chulanont’s friendly chattering as he simply takes the lovingly decorated room in, “I find myself at a loss of words. One of your workers has mentioned new money in our mutual friend’s lucky hands, which I could not be more elated about. It simply is… so much more than I dared to hope for him the night I was blessed with his trust.”  
“Yuuri fell for you like an angel from the skies,” smiles the young man, “and he has been soaring ever since. With the occasional plummet whenever news of battles and bandits arrived. This haven has been his refuge when the city gets too much. Not just for him.” They share a long look that has Viktor shaking his head at his good fortune today. His entire week has been shit from the start, and it is Thursday.   
“Dear Chulanont, I simply have to introduce you to someone. Is Lord Christophe Giacometti a familiar name to you?”  
  
Then the serving girls arrive with the hot tub and buckets upon buckets of water that Viktor would grow tired of carrying quicker than them without a doubt. He is left alone when he declines any help in disrobing, even though opening all these buttons down his front with his left hand only and the right arm covering half of them is a damn annoyance still after a week of getting used to it. Carefully stepping into the hot water, he hisses, sighs, cries for a bit at the kindness of it all and takes care to let his wrapped arm rest on the side of the tub. Shrapnel is nasty, he got lucky that it only hit his dominant arm. It could have gotten him in the chest – and it did grace him in the side, though that particular wound is almost an afterthought now – or the legs, never to breathe or walk again. Like this, only his ability to shoot accurately will be impaired, what with the tremor he has already had to accept as part of the injury. Lucky, the nurses said. Viktor leans back and wills himself not to cry any more today.   
  
After the bath, that letter is written, kept short as he expects to be with Yuuri soon anyway. Of course, he copies the address. Mr Chulanont whisks it away on a silver platter to be sent the very same day before he comes back with a tray of food worthy enough of royalty. The season thins the array of fruit, but there are vegetables aplenty, bits of chicken doused in some heavenly wine sauce with raisins, fresh pieces of bread and strong cheese the likes of which the French would be jealous of. Silently Viktor notes how everything is already cut up so that he can easily use a fork one handed. The flavours all but make his gums pop in extasy.   
“How fortunate you are,” he muses in between bread and cheese, looking up when Mr Chulanont stays silent. “I am so glad Yuuri found a friend as competent and loyal as you are. If you excuse my dislike of London, I would love to get to know you better.”  
“With pleasure.” They share a smile of kindred spirits over the dining table, neither of them is ignorant of the servants bustling in and out of the room and going about their daily tasks in the house. The walls are thin, though Viktor feels strangely comforted by the steady dulled noise of life all around them.   
  
With a nod to the door through which his letter has been taken away to the post station he lowers his voice, incapable of hiding his smile.   
“I recognized the address in Wales. It is the same town close to which I myself have purchased an old manor with quite some land attached to it. Several farms tend to the surrounding area, the sea is never far away and the aforementioned town a charming one.” Almost ashamed he stares at the spotless tablecloth, his eyes catch the dancing candleflames. Drafts of air make them flicker silently. “Do you think… No, I am certain he went there on purpose, and I cannot help but hope that he is…”  
“Waiting for you to come home,” Mr Chulanont finishes his thought softly with a smile like marzipan. At that Viktor hangs his head, barely holding in a stuttered breath.   
“Is he? Am I? I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop. French soldiers, assassins, a cannon shot, anything.” He almost startles at the hand that covers his good wrist. Why he shakes and clenches so badly on the inside when he is safe, warm and fed, he wonders, ashamed, but his new friend never shows any judgement.   
“Stay the night at least, let me get you a change of clothes and give that letter a few days to arrive in Wales. Take it a day at a time, good General, the rest comes after. You will be breathing the country air before you know it.”  
  
Viktor stays for three more days to give his arm some time to heal from the arduous journey to Britain, as well as his tired soul, if he is honest with himself. His host is generous, never pities him despite the daily task of tending to his wounds, and they talk late into the evenings. But he yearns for Yuuri, has pictured their reunion a thousand times and more by now. What Yuuri fled London for plagues him, every answer can merely be guesswork built upon scraps and comments of Phichit Chulanont. The day that he all but orders Viktor to call him by his given name already, seeing as they are practically brothers in law – and if that doesn’t make his battered heart trip all over itself – and places an impressive stack of clothing boxes in front of his bed, he knows it’s time to move on.   
He will be back, so Fortuna be kind.  
  
The seaside salt has blown the last traces of snow out of the dunes of Wales. Viktor stares and stares and stares some more as the coach rolls into flat planes of a landscape as ancient as time itself, it seems. It is terribly easy to lose himself in the space of it, in the terrifying openness of the early springtime sky blue as the ice of St. Peterburg. How could his numb heart not melt at the sight of a small village tucked into a notch of the earth? He has seen it before, once, when he decided on a whim to buy the empty estate nearby in urgent need of major repairs. Everything deserves a second chance, he thinks. Everyone and everything, even if that means throwing himself headfirst into a forbidden romance that feels like a benediction when he finally lets himself believe in it. Somewhere in this red-bricked, white-fenced little village of cottages and a single church, Yuuri is waiting for him to return from the war. He will, soon. Getting out of the coach is only the first step into his new life. Sod mother Russia, Viktor thinks, wildly, as a gust of wind almost rips his hat away and his foot crushes gravel underneath.  
  
To decide where to start searching takes him the better part of an hour wandering around the picturesque village. There are more soldiers in red coats than he expected, all in good cheer that would catch and set him aflame with the heady scent of victory if not for his shattered arm. Most of them are on horseback while he is on foot, having sent his driver with the boxes full of his meagre belongings towards his estate. Still Viktor greets every soldier that passes and crosses his way, smiles and tips his head and nods at their slightly inebriated chatter. Distracted, increasingly desperate and lost, he is about two seconds short of entering the church to ask the pastor about a new addition to the village. Pastors always know more than the washer women, no matter the kingdom. His mud-drenched shoes counter the stupidity of that plan.  
  
“You are an idiot, Nikiforov,” he mutters in a tiny side street at the arse-end of the church, gaze downcast, just as he hears someone dismounting at the corner of the bakery ahead. Some higher force must be in an unusual streak of good will, as one of the many red-coated soldiers passing through spots Viktor, clad in green and grey and rather cold. His mare is a stunning chestnut work of living art, nickering and neighing softly at her rider’s ministration of the leather head pieces. The man is probably older than the way he moves lets on, judged by the white of his hair. Viktor knows his own silver shade makes him look beyond his age.   
  
“Forgive me, good General, but you appear lost. Do you speak English?”  
“Enough to get by,” Viktor replies while he bows to the man. The pins upon his breast make him a higher rank than the common private foot soldier, his uniform is clean and pressed the way it never is just after returning home. “Are you just back from Paris as well?”  
“Ah, I was lucky enough to get out of Leipzig unscraped and back to guarding Dover. Congratulations on your victory, Sir.”  
“And you to yours,” he forces out with a curt nod, willing himself not to blurt out the question he keeps wanting to shout at the top of his lungs so that someone in this little speck of dust on the map might point him in the right direction. Not nearly does every street have a name and the feat of finding the right one is making him tired.   
  
“Are you searching for anything, or anyone, perhaps?” The old soldier averts his eyes when he slips from politeness into a molten sort of kindness. “I know the feeling of wandering foreign streets far from home very well. Forgive me if I am intruding, I mean no offense.” Viktor thinks of the men who never truly come back from war then, haunted eyes in a face that looks uncomfortable in civilian clothes. Of the ones who leave again, never to return. The ones who sleep with a gun underneath their pillow until it becomes too tempting to wrap a hand around in the night, and so forth.   
“Actually, Lieutenant,” Viktor gives in with a shaky smile, “I would be forever grateful if you could tell me if there is an English-Japanese merchant newly in town. Townsfolk talks about these things more than about the war, in my experience. He… could help me. Coming home.”  
“Of course,” the man says and points towards from where most of the noise drifts into the alley. “Half the women of this fine village must be up and about the market today. Fine silks from eastern Asia, Chinese dyes, Indian prints. The like. Go find whom you are searching for, and the nearest exit will be to the north where most of the cottages are best sheltered from the seaside storms.”  
Bless the heavens for soldiers with as much empathy as intelligence, Viktor sighs internally, bows deep the way Yuuri would with his good hand pressed to his heart and braves an honest smile.  
“Thank you, good Sir. Thank you. Get home safely, take care.”  
  
Internally Viktor fights the confusion of which day he is stumbling through this tiny village on: a market on Sunday would be entirely odd, so it must be Monday, and that means that Napoleon is on his way to the island Elba now. Away from the continent. A heavy weight is lifted from his chest as the alley widens into a moderately sized marketplace. Stalls form a half circle to open towards the townhall, early springtime has turned the ground into a slippery muddy nightmare despite the biting wind rushing through the wavering people every once in a while. The fabrics they wrapped themselves in blush like the early pastel spring. Winter still pales them. Viktor presses his injured arm closer to his chest, dismissing stall after stall even in the face of freshly caught fish and baked goods cooling on wooden platters. The smells waft into the air to tumble, like smoke, right into the winter wind. Hemlines are lifted, hats are clutched while the chatter gets ripped in two, a constant murmur dances in the air.   
  
A shock reverberates through him: There. Behind a stall groaning under the weight of dozens of bonnets, shawls and hats of every practical style, the most colourful silks available on the entire market are perused by an excited flock of women every age to fifty. Their humming charms hide the man behind the sales table. Viktor only catches a hint of a dark blue sleeve, a trim of purple lace, silver buttons gleam in the obscured daylight. If he did not anticipate one thing, it is to see Yuuri Katsuki after all these months in half-mourning. Every scenario previously dreamed up at late hours of the night vanishes like they never existed, confusion and fear grip him mercilessly as he shoulders his way through the inattentive crowd of buyers. When the third elbow lands entirely too near his injured arm for comfort in distracted annoyance, Viktor slips behind the rows of hut-like selling stalls, light on his feet, dizzy with the pounding urgency to reach the only man on earth he wants to see again.   
“Yuuri!”   
Eye-contact lands like a physical blow.  
  
Yuuri wears surprise wide as saucers plain on his face, chased away by something like heartbreak, by elation, by relief so stark it makes Viktor’s knees buckle. How he pats the apprentice next to him on the shoulder to lean in for a whispered word speaks worlds about the brimming instinct to get away. The boy, ginger haired, no older than 17 maybe, nods to his master even as Yuuri already melts into the shadows in between a large noble house and the townhall. On the threshold of dimmed winter light and inky blackness he throws a look over his shoulder, enticing and questioning all at once, anxious, longing; heaven above, how has Viktor ever been able to live without him?  
  
“You came,” Yuuri whispers, half mad, when they collide into one another like ships in the night. Pain flares up Viktor’s injured arm all the way into his shoulder, but he doesn’t care, he _doesn’t care at all_ , as long as he is able to press Yuuri close to him one-handedly and shake apart in his embrace.   
“Of course. Yuuri, my Yuuri, of course I did. I promised, did I not? At the ball, do you remember?”  
“If I remember that ball!” he laughs through tears and rears back a little, to kiss him and kiss him and kiss him until they are both breathless. “That New Year’s Eve was the most memorable end to any year I ever experienced. And I thought – you could have been – There was news from Saxony about that dreaded battle, and no letter ever reached me since – until-“  
“Yuuri, darling, I am _here_ ,” Viktor stops him with tears burning in his eyes because he hasn’t let himself believe it either up to now. London seems like a hazy coloured dream in seven shades of winter to him.   
  
They are out on the open road close to the most packed space in the small town, which is a spectacularly bad idea if he has ever seen one. That Yuuri voices the concern out loud before he can even open his mouth only makes the intense urge to be alone with him burn brighter.   
“We should head inside. I have an apartment not far from here, at the edge of the village because I-“  
“Because you wanted to be close once I moved into my estate,” Viktor finishes the aborted reasoning, fondness makes his chest swell and he can’t help himself but caress Yuuri’s cheeks.   
“Quite right,” nods he, blushing. His gaze is lowered with a loving smile. “Your hand is cold.”  
“Not anymore,” Viktor replies with a kiss to the corner of his mouth, his heart is pounding for an array of different reasons, one of them how badly it hurts to pull away. But they must and they both know it. “Your charming secretary gave me your address, though I do confess to having been utterly unsuccessful so far in finding the house itself. This place is a maze.”  
  
Yuuri looks like he wants to answer four different things at once, though in the end, he only pulls Viktor along by his good hand, concern only slipping over his features at the sight of the dark sling for a second before he straightens, glowing.   
“If I know you at all, you will come to love it before long. The people are merely curious, not half as prying as Londoners, and they cannot wait to meet the mysterious Russian lord who is rumoured to take over the near estate. And Welsh! Not English. That is important to remember, Viktor, never call them English, you hear me? You’ll want to keep your head, now that I have you back.”  
“Yuuri,” Viktor grins, dizzy with fondness, barely feeling the cold anymore. “It is good to see you again too.”  
  
Yuuri’s townhouse is everything he dreamed about in between the rounds of gunfire. This, Viktor thinks with reverence as they enter a spacious bedchamber with an attached salon and washing room on either side, this is what he has been waiting for, has been hoping for in the horror of war. He is warm in tender hands, cared for, loved, even. Loved, oh, how he wishes it to be true! Yuuri takes off his great coat and straightens the collar, ushers him into the small sitting room right to the fireplace where he doesn’t bother with ringing a servant.   
  
To watch him build a fire, to see how it lights up his hazel eyes, lets Viktor move back into fluid motion. Still his steps on the plush carpet are hesitant.   
“If I can help…”  
“Nonsense, your arm is shot,” Yuuri retorts without looking up, there is a sort of back-hand pain in his words that hints at a shock not yet examined closely. Only when the fireplace crackles to life, a flickering thing growing bolder, does he sit back on his heels and smile at Viktor. “I do not mind doing the heavy lifting, really. You would never believe the weight of layers upon layers of fabric wrapped for shipment.” Oh, Viktor gulps silently, oh, his lover is stronger than he looks. Oh, heavens help him…  
“Half of me would have been surprised that you partake in sailor’s work before I met your charming secretary.”  
“Did he treat you well? Tell any embarrassing stories about me?”  
“None I minded listening to,” Viktor gives with a tiny bow of the head that makes Yuuri blush the colour of prim roses.   
“Phichit is a godsend, I wouldn’t know what to do without him anymore, but he talks more than some people are entirely comfortable with. I am truly glad you took a liking to him.” No, Viktor does not stare at his backside as he gets up and brushes off his trousers. Instead of saying what he clearly meant to, he closes his mouth again, still dusted with a lovely pink around his nose. A heartbeat passes and they stand in each other’s spaces, breathing in safety. Viktor feels like weeping and laughing all at once.   
“Yuuri,” he murmurs transfixed, tracing the shape of his lover’s cheekbones with his thumb before he seals their lips, shuddering for a whole different reason than the chill. All his instincts tell him to sweep Yuuri into both his arms and carry him to the nearest bed, lay him bare and let them both burn up the tension in the air. The way he exhales softly against his hand makes Viktor’s head spin. “My Yuuri, you were my compass. All that kept me going in the long days of Leipzig was a look to the northwest; to England, where I knew you safe. Yuuri,” and he can’t stop saying this beautiful name, until he is silenced by a kiss almost too hard for comfort. His blue hair band flutters to the floorboards like a feather in the wind.   
  
“I must warn you,” Yuuri hiccups into blinding softness, “If you talk of battles tonight, I will cry. Talk about them if you need to, in me you always have an open ear and it would never even occur to me to judge you for whatever feelings overwhelmed you in these horrid hours. But, Viktor, I _can’t_ ,” and his voice breaks, sobs, “Not yet, I can’t, I thought you dead. Abandoned in some… field torn bloody. And I never was a pretty man in tears, I am sorry to say.” Viktor wants to embrace and shush him, wants to dry his eyes and ignite his smile again, though he knows very well that this will take time.   
“As if any tears would make you less perfect to me,” he shakes his head adoringly, cups Yuuri’s cheek and wipes away his tears without trying to stop them. Had he let himself cry even once about … everything, really, he never would have stopped before he collapsed. But this, this is different, this he can fix. Fear is a far-away spectre in their tiny world. The sitting room is slowly warming up, melting away fog on the windowpanes, so he pulls Yuuri into his lap on a chaise longue in front of the fireplace.   
  
“You saw the life I built for myself. My business in London escalated into something much bigger than I can handle on my own, however I managed it, I could not say if I tried. So I had to get away, and your letters were so few and far apart and I kept waiting, I thought, I thought… If I only change the scenery. Maybe. Took two apprenctices to set up a small shop here and settled in to wait.” Yuuri wipes his face, rakes a hand through his short hair and stares into the middle distance even while he leans into Viktor’s one-armed embrace. His whole face crumbles as he takes a deep breath to upend the contents of his heart. “You stopped replying, so I…”  
“Assumed the worst,” Viktor fills in nodding before he buries his whole face in the slope where Yuuri’s delicate neck melts into his shoulder. “My letters must have gotten lost or they were intercepted, it is a common thing one hears about amongst the troupes. My darling, I am glad you kept up your business here. In truth, I could not be more proud about your success, it gladdens me to see such dedicated a merchant as you rewarded for your hard work.”  
“I had to do something,” Yuuri answers, shrugging helplessly, and still sudden eye contact is a shock all over again. There are depths to his eyes that Viktor will spend a lifetime to explore, so he is allowed. “Tell me plainly, Viktor, and please do not hold back for my consideration: Have you come to see me and take my heart to Russia once you must leave again, or am I allowed to hope for you to stay?”  
  
The plea is obvious in that last little word. Stay. Viktor feels himself breaking on the inside, a knife edge buries itself into his heart where his loyalties have been fighting one another for over one and a half years now. The tipping point was the spray of shrapnel that dug itself into his dominant arm. Not that this made things easier for him, but it allowed him to give into temptation, and here he is, rewarded.   
  
“Of course, I will stay with you now that I have found you. Yuuri,” he breathes, urgent in his need to get his decision across, “My brave beloved Yuuri, something tells me this estate in the neighbourhood was left wanting a master for a reason. Even before I met you, something tugged me towards these green plains, and I would like to believe it was you calling out to me. Nothing would ever convince me to return for Mother Russia indefinitely now that she has let me go.” When he makes to lower his head in shame for the coming words, Yuuri tips his chin up instead with two soft fingers. Tenderly, gentle, blatant that he has never held a rifle in his life. Viktor loves him and loves him and loves him so much it aches. “I am but of little use now to my brothers in arms as my shooting hand has become weak. There will, most likely, be a tremor left once I am healed, according to the British military doctor in Paris who saw to me as well as your kind friend’s personal doctor in London. And what is a shaking hand to a soldier but a death sentence?”  
  
“Never,” Yuuri denies an unspoken path not taken by destiny, shaking his head vigorously. Even after so little time with him, Viktor hears the implications. “Neither are you useless, nor must your hand remain weak all your life. Give yourself time to heal and see what wonders the sea air can do.” Nervous, he licks his lips. “Does it make me wicked that I cannot find it within myself to be entirely sorry? Despite all your pain? If you truly stay…”  
“No, darling, I understand,” Viktor replies with a small smile which he keeps all his inner turmoil out of and kisses him again for good measure. His legs are growing numb, Yuuri is still wearing his gloves, they both ought to drink something warm and eat, though none of them is quite willing to get up yet. “If everything happens for a reason, I was uprooted to start over with you. A chapter in my life is closed and I only need some time to figure out what to do with the next.” The wide-eyed look his beloved gives him is simply too much to resist. “Besides kissing you in the mornings, coaxing the sweetest sounds from your lips once you welcome me into your bed, if you should wish so. Reminding you to eat when you are busy over your books, managing the estate so that you will never have to bother with the tedious work of the landed gentry, light your candles in the evenings, keep you warm at night. Be here, always.”  
“Viktor,” Yuuri hitches, not unlike a prayer.   
  
They have time, Viktor decides as the love of his life throws himself around his neck shaking with the same revelation. His arm will stop hurting quite so badly, and if it aches when summer fades into autumn, if it twinges in the fog and rain, it will be a reminder what allowed him to settle by the sea in Wales. The bandage will come off so that he can embrace Yuuri fully as he deserves. There will be wine and cheese and brandy and roast turkey, peace, and tranquil, and much more love than the history books will ever know what to do with. A quiet sort of married life, even if it is only their truth alone.


End file.
